Composer, pianist and conductor, was born in Bucharest in 1961. After graduating from the National Conservatory of Music in Bucharest, she obtained a degree from Paris Sorbonne in 1992. In 1994 she was awarded the Grand Prize in Composition from the Romanian Academy. Since 1988, Ana-Maria Avram has mentained a close collaboration with Iancu Dumitrescu, but she has also continued to forge her own direction in music. She is considered to be one of the most important Romanian composers of her generation.

Her music incorporates the outward semblences of sonic abstractionreaching its full development in the synthesis of electroacoustic and instrumental sources.

Her main works are : Threnia I-II for orchestra and soloists, Ekagrata, Swarms, for chamber orchestra, De sacrae Lamentationem for large orchestra, Zodiaque I-IV, NotturnoI-II, Signum Gemini, Ikarus I-IV, - electronic & instrumental music, Archae, Metaboles, Quatre études d'ombre, Axe , Ikarus-Kronos Quartet, Assonant I-III , Penumbra- instrumental and chamber musics.

Her musics are published by Edition Modern, Electrecord, Artgallery, Radio France

Her music was performed in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Standford, in Vienna ( in the Wien Modern Festival in 1992 and 1994 ) at Paris ( several times at Radio France and Theatre de la Ville ) in London ( several times at Royal Festival Hall ) Nancy, Allicante, Lisbon, Baden-Baden, Darmstadt, Moscow, Belgarde, Istanbul etc.

Her works has been commissioned by prestigious ensembles such as Kronos Quartet ( San Francisco ) « 20 Jahrhundert » from Vienna, soloists from l'Orchestre National de France, orchestras as Bucharest Philharmonic Orchestra, Romanian National Orchestra, Romanian Radio Chamber Orchestra, L'Orchestre de Chambre de Roumanie, etc.

« On the Abolition of the Soul » - a Radio France commission was released on a double CD- Radio France, an anthology of Prix Italia since 1949.

PRESS Fragments

Romanian composer IANCU DUMITRESCU and his associate, ANA-MARIA AVRAM, leading figures in the Eastern European school of modern classical music have issued many stunning works through the years, but this is the first to be issued in America.
Los Angeles, sept.1999

« Of the three CD's issued thus far, one also contains three excellent works by a pupil of his: ANA MARIA AVRAM, whose compositional style is every bit as fascinating and innovative, and is certainly a talent to look out for. .. »
Alan FREEMAN "AUDION" , Leicester , March 1993

ANA-MARIA AVRAM recently composed a quartet for Kronos, and followed it up with "Nouvelle Axe", peformed here by the strings of Romania's Hyperion Ensemble, who also work with DUMITRESCU. It's an uncompromising piece with a tendency to noise throughout, drawing blizzards of pizzicato, high - pitched sounds and lots of glissandos from the panoply of avant garde string effects.
ANDY HAMILTON - THE WIRE (49), August 1999, LONDON

Both Avram and Dumitrescu are convinced that if they have been able to open new doors in music, it is because they have made or found precisely those connections between musical activity and inner life that remain unarticulated in conventional musical training. This is not, however, simply a matter of theit philosophy and motivation as artists. The psychological reality if their music is directly grounded in a conception of the acoustic reality of sound.
Tim Hodgkinson, Musicworks No 71, Toronto, Summer 1998

Works also features three compositions by ANA-MARIA AVRAM, born in Bucharest in 1961. Wonderful to hear music where textural innovations aren't employed to colour pre-existing structures, but evolve form in process. On Zodiaque she plays prepared piano opposite Dumitrescu, a percussionist and magnetic tape.

Seems like these Romanians are engaged in a similar kind of sonic research to that which resulted in the masterpieces of Giacinto Scelsi and Ennio Morricone : collective endeavour, genuine "deep listenning". The results are similarly overpowering a milion miles from the tootling inconsecuence of most of what passes for New Music in the classical world.
BEN WATSON - The Wire, London May 1995